


Uncoincidental

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 17:56:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Poe and Finn land in opposite directions on Jakku. Rey and BB-8 are at Niima Outpost when the galaxy's greatest pilot arrives in full splendor.





	Uncoincidental

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeste9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/gifts).



“That’s my droid!”

It was the first thing he yelled at her. He was an exuberant, sweaty mirage, lumbering and hollering through the middle of Niima Outpost. Rey ducked out from a dusty lean-to at the sound of his voice, BB-8 chattering wildly around her heels. She nearly tripped but caught hold with her staff, and held back to watch BB-8 roll up to the bedraggled man as he dropped to his knees and opened his arms. He was loud and stupid, but clearly cared for the droid, who tumbled into his chest.

Rey strode up to him. “Are you the Resistance pilot?” she demanded.

The man laughed, an attractive grin splitting his face. BB-8’s head swirled to face her and beeped something quite presumptuous. Rey shooed it away and stepped closer, towering over the man. “Don’t laugh,” she snapped. “Who are you?”

“Right—” His grin disappeared. He rose hastily, brushing sand off of his torn uniform, and held out his hand. “I’m Poe Dameron. This is my droid, BB-8. We’re with the Resistance.”

He wasn’t much taller than her. Rey leered at his open hand. She hesitantly took it into her left.

Overly friendly, he clapped his other hand onto hers and squeezed tight. “Thank you for helping BB-8—”

She gripped his wrist and twisted his arm around. “Don’t hold my hand,” she barked.

“Ow! Okay—sorry.” Poe stepped back, shoulders slumped, and aged ten years. Older than what Rey initially assumed. “I’ve had a rough day.”

“Me too,” she agreed. “Your droid almost got salvaged for parts and I turned down weeks’ worth of food. What are you doing on Jakku?”

“It’s a long story,” he said, countenance grim. “I got into some trouble. I just need to get BB-8 back to the Resistance.”

“What’s so important about a droid?” Rey asked. Surely Poe wasn’t going to sell it.

Poe licked his lips and glanced around the market street. Rey found herself leaning closer to him in anticipation.

“Well?” she prompted.

“BB-8’s holding a map,” he said. “Part of a map. To find Luke Skywalker.”

Rey’s eyes grew. “Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth.”

“I was sent by his own twin sister,” Poe said. “The First Order attacked the village, so I gave the map to BB-8. Then I got—I couldn’t get away.” Poe’s mouth twisted into a grimace after he stammered. “A stormtrooper broke me out of the Star Destroyer.”

“A stormtrooper helped you?” Rey asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Poe said. “He was different than all the others. We stole a TIE fighter and managed to escape, but crash landed on our way back to pick up BB-8. He...didn’t make it.”

BB-8’s head drooped at the news. Rey looked down. “You wanted to thank him,” she said.

Poe sighed, patting the droid. “Aw, buddy, me too.”

Rey turned. People were beginning to stare, no doubt wondering what her connection was to this boisterous stranger.

“Well, there’s your droid.” She took a step back, needled by the sympathy his story elicited. “I should be going.”

“Wait!” Poe stood with outstretched hands. “Please, I need your help...”

“You kept BB-8 safe.”

She took another step back, shaking her head. “Look—I don’t want to get involved.”

All of a sudden Poe paled, fixated on something in the distance. “Looks like you already are.”

“What?” She turned, caught a glimpse of advancing white armor in between tents, and moaned. “You’re kidding.”

Poe gripped her hand and broke into a sprint, BB-8 right behind.

“Stop holding my hand!”

“We need to get off-planet!”

A handful of TIEs whizzed out from the sky, sparking Niima Outpost in an airstrike.

  
Poe ducked underneath a flap of cloth to catch his breath; Rey lifted her arm to catch it as she followed. “Where would a ship be?” Poe gasped. “We need a ship!”

“No, _you_ need a ship,” Rey countered. “I can’t leave.”

“You’re coming with me,” Poe insisted. “You’re marked!”

The tent’s dingy cloth coiled in the wind as roaring explosions lit up in a stagger down the main street. Bystanders began to drop, singed by blasters or caught in the collateral of TIE ion cannons.

Rey sighed. She pointed to the shipyard at Niima’s outskirts, which creaked in crumbling rust. Starfighters, freighters, luxury yachts, and speeders in all stages of disrepair where aligned haphazardly. The yard’s usually protected perimeter was abandoned. “There. That’s your best bet.”

Poe took off again—just as a honing beam crashed into the ground behind him. Rey, Poe, and BB-8 were sent flying through the air with a giant spray of sand, broken wooden supports, and cloth now on fire. They landed roughly, skidding into debris and stray appendages of the fallen. Grit blew into Rey and Poe’s mouth and eyes; BB-8’s outer mechanisms filled with sand.

At first all Rey could feel was dust and the loose ground shifting beneath her. She heard nothing and saw nothing, face smashed down into the sand. Her head swam and ears rang.

But she’d fallen from greater heights. Once one wrong foothold made the exterior hull of a Star Destroyer sweep up before her until she cracked upon impact. Or when swinging across a desiccated bridge, and a moment’s distraction sent her anchoring rope rippling out of her hands. There were greater injuries than vertigo.

Rey lifted her head. She spat and coughed. squinting her eyes, looking for Poe, BB-8, and Stormtroopers simultaneously. Her hearing returned in distant rumblings, until she could make out screams, fires, and whooshing TIEs individually.

Underneath it all came a piercing nonhuman screech, droidlike and urgent. Rey turned to the incessant noise. BB-8 was annoyingly distressed, pacing before a splayed Poe some meters away. She scrambled to her knees and crawled toward him, keeping low beneath ongoing laser blasts.

“I know, BB-8,” Rey said as she arrived. She flopped Poe over onto his back. He was caked in dust and running with blood. She wondered what happened to him on the Star Destroyer. Up close, his face was gaunt and lined with exhaustion. How long had he walked in the desert after landing?

“Come on!” She couldn’t remember his name and shook his shoulders. “Wake up! We have to go!”

He stirred and blinked his eyes open. Rey wrenched him up by his hand and pushed him to the shipyard.

"What happened?"

"We fell."

“I need a co-pilot!” 

“You’ve got one."

“You?” 

They finally entered the shipyard. Rey raced to a quadjumper. Before she could reply to Poe’s surprised inquiry, an errant TIE swung around. Its shot missed them but incinerated the quadjumper in a bright blaze.

Poe stumbled to a halt. “How about that one?”

Rey appraised the Corellian freighter he mentioned. It was broken down and covered in dirty tarps. “That ship’s garbage!”

“It’ll do,” Poe said.

Miraculously, the boarding ramp responded to their touch. Poe threw himself into the cockpit.

“Can you fly this?” Rey asked.

“I can fly anything,” Poe vowed. He swayed forward over the controls and shook his head as if to clear it. Then his hands danced erratically across the panels. Rey gripped the back of Poe’s seat as the engine jarred to life. Lights clicked on, some broken or flickering, as the ship’s deflector shields rumbled with assault.

Poe jerked back, gripping the side of his head where a shallow cut bled profusely.

Rey stepped around to face him, inserting herself between Poe and the controls. “Let me.”

He stared up at her for a moment—only to nod and rise, vacating the pilot’s seat. Rey blinked, then quickly sat down and studied the ship’s readouts. They’d be able to just barely make it into hyperspace. Once there, Rey would figure out the rest.

She took a deep breath. “I can do this.”

“What?” Poe asked.

“Nothing.” She twisted in her seat to look out the viewport. Shadows of TIEs cut across the sand, laying way for the encroaching rows of stormtroopers. Far off on the other side of Niima Outpost’s remains, drop ships began to descend. “We don’t have much time.”

Poe snapped his fingers. “There must be a gunner in this thing.”

“You can’t manage that in your condition.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said.

Poe was jogging out of the cockpit before Rey could argue further. She didn’t like the odds, but there weren’t any other options. They wouldn’t make it out of Jakku’s atmosphere in this thing without at least _some_ firepower.

A headpiece laying aside blinked green. Rey put it on.

“Can you hear me?” Poe asked.

“Yes.”

“Show me what you’ve got, kid.”

Rey grinned. She was flying! Poe’s voice fizzled out as she lifted the ship into air. It was clunky to maneuver, but electrifying. As she shot further way from Niima Outpost, Rey felt an energy transfer from her hands throughout the ship. The old maid had a hot-and-loose responsiveness she quickly accustomed to, while kilometers of sand spread out before her.

“We’ve got some followers,” Poe warned.

“I can see that,” Rey said, checking the radar—a triad of TIEs dogged their rear.

She swung around toward the Battleground of Jakku. It was a miles-long procession of rusted Destroyer, fighter, and transport hulls. Flying above jagged metal spears, Rey was accosted by the knowledge that hundreds had died here. A strange, cryptic feeling washed over her. Even if there were something left to scavenge after all this time, she’d never set foot there.

But she knew the ships. All of identical design. She learned their layouts in flight simulators, racking up her own high scores; and in person, swinging precariously between bombed rooms to side-up corridors.

Poe snagged another TIE as they whizzed between broken X-wing parts. Once they neared a hollowed Star Destroyer, his voice cut into Rey’s ear. “I’m jammed! I can’t move!”

She cursed and looked at the radar again. The last remaining TIE was directly behind them, perfectly aligned. All Poe had to do was swing around and face the ship head on.

“Get ready,” Rey said.

Determinedly focused through the haze of injury, he answered curtly: “Alright!”

And time seemed to slow. Rey yanked the joystick, sending the ship on an upward curve. The sky spun underneath her as the pilot’s seat reached it’s zenith upside down. She cut the engine; they went throttling to the ground.

All Rey could see was the incoming wall of sand as Poe’s targeting computer lined up. She screamed into her mic. “Shoot! Shoot!”

She heard a loud blast. Poe whooped; BB-8 exclaimed. Rey fired the ship up again and followed through with her turn, leveling out in a sickening lurch.

The radar was empty! Just to be sure, Rey leaned forward in her seat to scan the viewport, control panel cutting into her chest. There was no one around. She leaned back and sighed, taking ahold of the joystick again to cruise out of atmo.

Blue sky darkened to space black. Jakku bottomed out, shrinking into a bright chip over her shoulder.

The headset had fallen to her neck and tangled in loosened hair. Rey hurriedly righted it. “Poe? Are you okay?”

“That was fucking awesome!”

Rey jolted; Poe’s voice boomed directly behind her in the cockpit. He walked up, clapped her shoulder, and sank into the co-pilot’s chair.

Rey watched Poe scan the ship’s readouts, briefly touching her shoulder in confusion.

He looked up, met her gaze, and winked.

She dropped her hands in her lap and glanced away into space, hiding a smile. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> secret santa for serceleste on tumblr/celeste9 on ao3. a bit shorter than i wanted, but if i didn't stop soon i'd have to do tfa's entire exposition. maybe one day! 
> 
> please go look at celeste's work it is wonderful. this was a true honor!


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